


The Magician and the Toymaker

by tatertatra



Category: Nußknacker und Mausekönig | Nutcracker and the Mouse King - E. T. A. Hoffmann
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-03
Updated: 2020-01-03
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:22:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22106248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tatertatra/pseuds/tatertatra
Summary: Clara Stahlbaum had been warned about boys with dark hearts and pretty tongues. They made you feel so beautiful and so clever with their wicked words like breath against the shell of your ear—or a kiss at the base of your throat—you never even felt the knife they slipped between your ribs to cut out your heart.So when the toymaker smiled softly at her from across his shop, face sharp and his eyes bright and blue like winter ice, she knew the cruelty he was capable of.She fell in love with him anyway.
Relationships: Droßelmeier | Drosselmeyer/Marie | Clara, Marie | Clara/Nußknacker | Nutcracker
Comments: 12
Kudos: 66





	The Magician and the Toymaker

**Author's Note:**

  * For [orwuahl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/orwuahl/gifts).



_For Caitie_

Clara Stahlbaum had been warned about boys with dark hearts and pretty tongues. They made you feel so beautiful and so clever with their wicked words like breath against the shell of your ear—or a kiss at the base of your throat—you never even felt the knife they slipped between your ribs to cut out your heart.

So when the toymaker smiled softly at her from across his shop, face sharp and his eyes bright and blue like winter ice, she knew the cruelty he was capable of. 

She fell in love with him anyway.

✦

When Herr Drosselmeyer’s toy shop opened with the first snow of the season, the children of the city were certain it was some sort of magic. 

No one knew where the toymaker had come from. He simply appeared one day, younger than what seemed possible for such a skilled man, and built a toy shop from the blackened bones of a shop that had once been a bakery. He scrubbed the smoke from the windows and the plaster until the skin of his hands grew raw and the water in his pail grew black. Still, he worked alone through rain and snow. Day in and day out, until days became weeks and weeks became cold months. New wooden beams replaced the charred ones. New glass displays installed where broken ones had been. Elegant, looping text painted across the window of the new, red door: _Herr Drosselmeyer’s Toy Shoppe._

So it seemed that nothing in the shop was not born of his hand.

The town took notice of the strange man with dark hair and light eyes, and it didn’t take long for them to gather beyond the front glass to watch him work. At first it was watching him make the inside of the shop beautiful again, bringing dark wood floors back to gleaming life and polishing the brass fixtures until they glittered in the gaslight like real gold.

And then it was watching him make toys. 

The toymaker—no one had been brave enough to ask if he was the Herr Drosselmeyer the shop was named after—sat at his workbench at the great front window and brought every child’s dream to life with hands as steady and lithe as bird bones. Wooden horses with wild manes and curly-haired soldiers with wool coats the color of emeralds and cuffs like rubies. He painted the softest faces of babes on delicate pieces of porcelain with rosy pigments. He carved carousels of dragons and unicorns. 

The toymaker would only smile politely to those who gawked as they walked past and when they asked when he would be open, he simply said, “When the time is right.” 

He would not sell early or accept any sort of reservation of his toys. They brought him coin, party invitations, and promises of marriage to eldest daughters. All he graciously refused, with a tinge of pink to his cheeks and the reassurance that he would be open soon. 

“You are very kind,” said the toymaker, pulling one last stitch through the felt body of a crowned rat, “but I cannot open until the time is right.”

A man with a thick mustache and a belly shaped like a barrel sighed. “When, exactly, do you expect the time will be right?”

The toymaker leaned to look out the window and up at the sky. He smiled at the clouds. “Very soon, Herr Reinecke. Very soon.”

The mustached-man grunted in agreement and left the shop, bell chiming behind him as the door closed, and didn’t stop to wonder when the strange toymaker had learned his name until he was already down the block. 

So intent on refusing any claims of favor from the townspeople, only once did the toymaker take a wedge of firm yellow cheese and a loaf of brown bread from an old woman who claimed he reminded her of her late husband, so serious and always working so hard he forgot to eat. In return gave her a peck on the cheek and a small wooden doll for her grandchildren. The old woman kissed his tinkerer's hands and shuffled away with a doll painted so beautifully it made her weep. 

Herr Drosselmeyer, the people decided, was strange and quiet, but he was also kind.

And as he sat at his pistachio-colored workbench sewing tulle around the hips of a dancer, and as he looked up just in time to watch the first snowflakes drift down from the grey sky, he knew the time was right.

✦

Clara Stahlbaum didn’t understand why her little brother was so intent on getting to the toy shop early. 

“Hurry up,” Fritz whined. His breath came out in little rapid puffs of steam, his cheeks bright pink from exertion like a doll. “All the good stuff is going to be gone by the time we get there!”

She let him pull her through the snow by the fur of her muff, still refusing to move any faster. She laughed as his foot slipped in the snow packed between the cobblestones. 

“Clara, I mean it!”

“Do you even have the money for this? You’re not borrowing any from me.”

He made a face. “I have money!” Reaching deep into the pocket of his coat, he pulled out two silver Mark coins and held them in the palm of his mittens. 

Clara came to a halt. “Where on earth did you get those?”

He snatched the coins away as she reached from her furs for them. “I’ve been saving! Papa pays me sometimes for delivering messages to his clients.”

She scowled. “Spoiled.”

He stuck his tongue out before taking her by the elbow again and dragging her towards the center of town. 

The world felt different in the snow. It didn’t matter how many times Clara had seen it, how many seasons had come and gone with thick white blankets over the earth, it always felt bright and new and exciting. 

Even if she was too old for dolls and rocking horses, she was secretly grateful for the chance to be outside with her brother, pretending they were on an adventure again. Perhaps she was a knight off to rescue a maiden in a tower, or the wife of a blue-bearded man with secrets locked in his basement. She let the thoughts of fairies and princes and castles carry her past snow-covered cathedrals and townhouses to _Herr Drosselmeyer’s Toy Shoppe_.

✦

Stepping into _Herr Drosselmeyer’s Toy Shoppe_ was like stepping into every childhood dream Clara had ever had. It was like a rush of warmth and magic over her skin, washing her in the sound of laughter and clockwork and the soft snap of gaslights.

Foolishly, she had to blink back the sting of tears in her eyes at the wonder of it all. 

Fritz had long forgotten about his sister, slipping from her without a second glance as he made for the elaborate train track that wove through the entire store above their heads, whistling and shooting steam into the air. 

Clara didn’t know where to look first. It was all too much and not enough all at once. People shuffled between the shelves and aisles, brushing furs and crinolettes. Children darted between their feet with bright peals of laughter. 

And for once, Clara didn’t mind it. 

Puppets hung from the ceilings by their strings. Porcelain dolls of every color and variety lined a shelf twice as tall as her father. Wind-up soldiers and trains and dancers. Golden music boxes with fairy queens, pastel rocking horses, jack-in-the-boxes with little brightly painted devils. She floated through the store in awe, slowly peeling off her fur hat and muff so she could reach out and _feel._

She stopped to pick a stuffed rat from the shelf and readjust his little golden crown. _Please tell me this isn’t just a dream, Herr_ _Rattenkönig,_ she thought _. And if it is please tell me I never have to wake._

“No one has paid that poor rat friend any mind so far today. You are the first. He must be very grateful you like him.”

Clara jumped and the plush slipped from her hands. She spun to find the most beautiful man she had ever seen, watching her kindly with the palest blue eyes. He knelt before her to pluck the toy from the ground and hand it back to her. Heat rushed to her cheeks as his fingers brushed the inside of her wrist. 

He smiled sheepishly and ran a hand through his impossibly dark hair. “I didn’t mean to frighten you, I’m sorry.”

“You— I—” Clara let out a shaky laugh to calm herself. “I was lost in thought, is all. It’s so beautiful. It’s a lot to take in.”

The corners of his eyes wrinkled. “From you, that is perhaps the greatest compliment a toymaker can receive.”

Clara blanched. “You are Herr Drosselmeyer? Forgive me, I—”

Drosselmeyer laughed. “There is nothing to forgive, Fräulein.”

“My friends call me Clara, Herr Drosselmeyer.” 

“Are we friends now, Clara?” he asked, letting the sound of her name skate across his tongue. 

It made the inside of her chest warm. She felt bold, despite herself. She held the rat king to her chest and smiled sweetly. “I don’t think that sounds so bad, do you?”

He watched her for a breath, something immeasurable burning in his eyes. “I think it would be a great pleasure to be your friend, Clara.”

She opened her mouth to reply when Fritz burst between them, as if he’d been conjured from thin air. She had to bite her tongue from crying out.

He wrenched the toy rat from her hands with wide eyes. “What is that?”

Drosselmeyer dropped down to Fritz’s height. His eyes were soft again, face sweet despite all its hard angles. “That, dear little one, is Rattenkönig. He is king of all vermin and he lives in an enchanted castle shaped like a great, tall clock.”

Clara rested her hand on Fritz’s head, smoothing over the curly blond hair that matched her own. “This is my little brother, Fritz. Fritz, this is my friend, Herr Drosselmeyer.”

Fritz’s jaw fell open. He ignored Clara completely. “We have a grandfather clock in our parlor! Does he live there?”

“Perhaps,” Drosselmeyer said with a shrug. He gave Clara a quick wink. “I think that means you should take him with you. Serving the Rattenkönig can be a big responsibility, do you think you are up for the challenge?”

“Yes!” Fritz cried. “I swear it!”

Drosselmeyer laughed. “Good, then he is yours.”

When Fritz went to fish in his pocket for his coins, Drosselmeyer held up his hand. “No, it is a gift. Merry Christmas, little Fritz.”

“Please, we have money. We couldn’t possibly—”

Drosselmeyer stood and bowed his head. “I do not make toys for the money, I only want to make people happy. Your delight is more than enough payment.”

Clara flushed. “That is no way to sustain a business, Herr Drosselmeyer.”

“Perhaps,” he said simply. “Though most businesses do not have the benefit of magic on their side. Isn’t that right, Fritz?”

Fritz was already gone again, slipping into the crowd with Rattenkönig tucked under his arm. Clara sighed, slipping her hat back onto her head, though she was deeply sad to leave so soon. 

Drosselmeyer reached out and straightened the white fur cap across her brow. 

Clara didn’t know how much more she could blush, but the toymaker was certainly trying to test her limits. She looked up at him through her lashes. “I am very happy to have made a friend today, Herr Drosselmeyer. Thank you for your kindness. It won’t be forgotten.”

“It was nothing,” he said. “I hope to see you again, Clara. Perhaps next time I can show you how to make something of your own.”

She couldn’t help the girlishness that bubbled up from somewhere locked away within her. “Do you really mean that?”

“I swear it, Clara. I think you could be capable of the greatest of magic.”

For once, she was lost for words. She bit her lip to fight back the smile threatening to burst through. “Then perhaps I will be sure to see you very soon.”

He nodded silently with one last tug on her hat. 

When she found Fritz and they began to make their way home again, Rattenkönig tucked safely in the breast of his coat, Clara turned and found Drosselmeyer smiling at her through the frosted window. 

✦

Clara did not return to the toy shop for two weeks, but she thought of Drosselmeyer often. Every idle moment, her mind slipped to his dark hair and brilliant eyes, to his sharp face and the way his voice sounded when he said her name. When she caught herself thinking of him, she would flush and scold herself for such girlish fantasies.

But even then, she couldn’t rid herself of him completely.

Fritz was never without his Rattenkönig. When he slept, when he ate. Even when he bathed, the toy sat in a chair overlooking their tub. Their mother and their nurses had tried to pry it from him but to no avail. 

When Clara had explained that it had been a gift and that Herr Drosselmeyer had been kind and talented, her father simply laughed.

“Perhaps we should invite the poor fool to our Christmas party,” Papa said. “It seems like the least we could do to thank him.”

Mama scowled over her glass of wine. “I’ve already sent the invitations out!”

Clara tried not to seem too eager. “I could tell him, if you want, Papa.”

Fritz smirked, but as he opened his mouth to say something, she kicked him under the table.

Papa clapped Fritz on the back as he choked on his potato dumplings. “I think that sounds like a fine idea, darling. You can go after dinner.”

Clara buried her smile in her cup and tried to think of what she should say to him.

✦

The sun had disappeared below the horizon by the time Clara got to Drosselmeyer’s shop. The sign was flipped to ‘Closed’ and the gaslights in the front had been put out, but as she pressed her nose to the window of the door, she could make out the faint flicker of candle light spilling through a backdoor.

She slipped her hands from her muff and tapped a nail against the window. 

A moment passed before his head, disheveled and smeared with paint, poked from beyond the door. Recognition lit up his face almost immediately and Clara couldn’t help the giggle that escaped from her. She waved as he scrambled across his dark shop, wiping his hands on a leather apron. 

He unlocked the door to let her in. “Clara! What brings you here?”

She accepted his greeting kisses across her cheeks after he locked the door behind them. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to bother you after hours, but I have good news.”

He flashed her a familiar, eye-wrinkled smile. “Good news from you? It must be the best news in the world, then.”

She slipped an invitation from inside her coat into his hands. He left grey fingerprints across the parchment. “My parents are having a Christmas party in two nights. They want you to come.”

He stared at the paper in the dark, tracing his fingers over the holly trim her mother had paid so much for. He turned without a word towards the backroom.

She followed him after a moment. “Herr Drosselmeyer? I thought you would be happy.”

The backroom was smaller than she anticipated, but warm and inviting. He had another workbench tucked into the corner, lined with parts and pieces and wood shavings. There was a small brass-framed cot in the opposite corner, a potbelly stove, and a trunk spilling with clothes. 

It shocked her that he seemed to live in such a tiny space, but she tried to keep her features schooled for propriety. 

He sat down at his workbench and held the invitation like it might float away. 

Clara stood awkwardly in the doorway, nowhere to sit. Unsure if she was even welcome anymore. 

“You don’t have to come if you don’t want to,” she said. “We didn’t mean to offend you. I—”

“Forgive me, Clara. I am not upset,” he said finally. He folded the invitation again and smoothed it against the surface of his bench. “I just— I’m not used to attention like this. The people of this town expect things of me and I do not know if I can perform as they expect. I know nothing of parties or etiquette or dancing.”

Clara watched him for a moment in silence. When he finally looked up at her, his eyes were sympathetic. She offered him a reassuring smile. 

“Dancing is no more complicated than magic, Herr Drosselmeyer, and I think you could be capable of the greatest of magic.”

His breath left him in the soft _whoof_ of a laugh. Color stained the tips of his ears. “You are a very clever girl, Clara. I should have known you would use my words against me.”

She curtsied. “All girls are clever. I’m no one special.”

“And I think you are very wrong about that,” he said, forcing himself to look down again at the parchment. 

She took a step closer, suddenly overcome with a need to be nearer to him, to be daring. She wanted him to look at her again like he had when they first met. “What makes you say that?”

“You are—” he took a deep breath. When he looked up at her again, through his lashes at first, the same hungry look crossed his face. It made her feel powerful. “What I said about the Rattenkönig is true. He is not for everyone and you chose him without hesitation.”

Without knowing what else to do, she laughed. “I am not my brother, Herr Drosselmeyer. I am too old for fairytales.”

“Who said this was a fairytale?” 

Her teeth snapped together. “But you speak of magic.”

“Yes, I speak of magic. But it is no more of a fairytale than you and I.”

Her eyes flickered to the half-formed toys laid out before him. 

“I told you I could show you, Clara,” he said softly. “I meant what I said. There is magic inside you. Perhaps it has always been there.”

All that childish energy she had tried to push away, the girlish need for princes and knights and castles, flared inside of her like a comet streaking across the night. So bright and blinding she couldn’t will it away this time. And for once—without Mama or Papa there to remind her of her duty as a sister or a future wife and mother—she didn’t want to.

Maybe that’s all magic ever was. The freedom to forget expectations and believe in impossible things.

Clara let her hand settle against his, fingers brushing against the pulse fluttering in his wrist. “I think I would like that very much, Herr Drosselmeyer.” 

When he looked up at her, his eyes caught on the seam of her lips, red from the cold and swollen where her teeth had worried. “Tomorrow evening, then?” 

“On one condition,” she said. “You have to dance with me at the Christmas party. One act of magic for another.”

He smiled at that. “You drive a hard bargain, Clara Stahlbaum, but I think I can give you that much.”

If the girls in all her childhood stories could be brave, then so could she. 

She brought his ink-stained knuckles to her mouth, slowly so he could pull away if she had crossed a line. Instead, he watched her in awe. 

“Then I will see you tomorrow evening,” she said against his skin, “and you can show me all you know.”

✦

Clara dreamt that night of war. 

She heard cannons slamming into the ground and the spray of dirt and gravel against piles of bodies. She saw emerald green uniforms and ruby red cuffs splattered with blood. Her mouth tasted of rot and iron. 

Someone across the way was calling her name, a voice that sang so familiar but distant all at once. Just out of reach in a memory. 

Before she woke, she caught a glimpse of a sickly looking boy with hair like gunpowder and eyes the color of the moss. He was beautiful and sad and he reached out for her across the dream. 

✦

The next night, she snuck from her window down the thick threads of ivy that clung to their manor’s brick exterior. She felt the soft, distant pull of the boy from her dream. Like his hand was just out of reach and his voice just far enough away to disappear against the howling of the wind. Lonely and longing.

 _Hers_. 

She forced herself to shake away thoughts of her curious dream and the way her heart chased after the soldier boy, traded for the toymaker and his cruelly handsome face. 

She made her way across town wrapped up in furs and a burgundy cloak, hidden to anyone who might dare be out to recognize her. She buried her nose in her muffler to keep out the cold and the snow. 

Drosselmeyer was waiting for her at the door. He held a candle up as he let her in, casting a warm golden light across his face. He looked younger, not so troubled for just a moment and lost in the happiness that she had returned. Clara kissed his cheek and unwound herself from her outerwear. 

“It is good to see you,” he said softly. “I was almost worried you’d lost your nerve.” 

Clara laughed. “Not at all, Herr Drosselmeyer. I was simply taking the scenic route.”

He simply shook his head in disbelief and led her to the back room. Her heart did tiny flips at the smile that never seemed to leave his lips when she was around, though a small part of her brain could never tell if it was a smile born of love or something else she did not understand—

Yet.

Clara dropped her cloak and muffler onto his bed. She smoothed her sweaty palms over her velvet skirt. Waiting, unsure. But brave. 

Drosselmeyer, she finally noticed as he followed behind her, was dressed simply, as if he were in the process of getting ready for bed. The thought made Clara’s cheeks warm. His cravat and collar loosened, his sleeves—stained with paint and grease and ink—rolled up to his elbows, and his suspenders hanging around his hips.

He sat the candle on the edge of his workbench and wiped his hands against the seat of his pants. “I thought we should start with something simple,” he said, motioning to a small bronze box. “You seem keen on dancing, and nothing goes better with dancing than music.”

Clara nodded curtly, steeling herself as he reached across the small space to pull her towards the stool. 

“Open it.”

She couldn’t help the tremble to her fingers as she plucked the music box from his workbench. Flipping it open, up sprang a beautiful dancer poised en pointe above the gears and a fine comb and cylinder. 

The dancer, tiny as she was for all the detail he had worked into her, had coifs of sugar-pink hair to match the tulle around her waist. Her skin was rosy and her bodice was decorated with specks of crystals. Iridescent-filmed wings sprouted delicately from her back. She glittered sweetly in the candlelight. 

“She’s beautiful,” Clara breathed. 

“Make her dance,” Drosselmeyer said, soft against the inside of her ear. He leaned over her, one hand braced at her side and the other cradling her fingers like glass. “Think of your favorite song and make her yours.”

Clara closed her eyes and thought of her first Christmas party. Fritz had been a baby, fast asleep with their nursemaid as she snuck down the stairs. She was still in her nightgown, trying desperately to hide behind the railings as she watched her parent’s friends sweep around their house in massive dresses and tailcoats. She remembered how the Christmas tree sparkled with glass ornaments and tiny candles, the way the music swelled with a wave of girls being hoisted into the air by their partners. The smell of perfume and pine and sugar. The subtle warmth of too many bodies in their home.

She still remembered _that_ song. Every beat and soft whine of the violin. 

And then, like drifting slowly out of a dream, the song began to play from the music box her hands.

Her eyes snapped open. The dancer was moving with the music, lifting her arms and legs with grace. She spun on the tips of her toes with wings fluttering in time. Arabesques, pliés, pirouettes. 

Drosselmeyer laughed like the chiming of bells. “Beautifully done, Clara.”

Clara blinked only to realize she was crying. Her heart felt full with delight—with possibility. “I did that?”

He flashed her smile, all heart and pride. “You did. And I bet you are capable of so much more.”

The dancer ended with a final penché and returned to first position, like she’d never moved at all. Clara sighed and looked back up at Drosselmeyer. He watched her with an unreadable sort of satisfaction. He waited for her to speak first.

For the first time, she didn’t have to fight to find her voice. “I want to know. I want to know what I’m capable of, Herr Drosselmeyer.”

“You’re not afraid of what you might discover?”

It was her turn to give him a prideful smile. “Not at all.”

✦

Clara spent the rest of the night at his side, learning how to make toys, how to make them move and dance and come alive with thought. She learned she could make little toy soldiers march in infantry lines across the floor, clockwork swans spread their wings and lions roar around a carousel. Each task was more beautiful than the last. Each made her swell with power. 

It was only when she’d dozed off at his workbench, waking with his threadbare blanket around her shoulders and the sky diffusing with pre-sunrise light, did she finally make herself leave. 

“I am a man of my word, Clara, darling,” he said as he walked her to the door. “I will see you tonight at your Christmas party.” 

“And you will dance with me.”

He chuckled and tucked her muffler under her chin. He kissed her cheeks when she left, pulling her hood down over her nose in jest. “And I will dance with you.”

As she turned to leave and gave him one last look over her shoulder, through his frosted window and the pale falling snow, she wondered what it might be like to kiss him in earnest. 

✦

Clara heard the whispers of rats in her dreams. 

In her nightmares.

They came from the Rattenkönig, fat on his writhing throne of tails and matted subjects. They hissed in the dark beneath him, squirming for release but Clara did not flinch. His eyes watched her like the little red beads on her favorite dress. The face of their grandfather clock glowing behind him like a halo. It glinted off his scrap metal crown—

Made from familiar things she had forgotten she’d lost.

“The toymaker,” he crooned, pointing at her with a gnarled paw. “The boy with sharp eyes and fine hands. He will promise to make you many pretty things but he is like the snow. Too cold for love. Kisses like the winter wind.” 

“But I am built for the cold,” answered Clara. She watched the hands of the clock tick past midnight, gears turning on the dais of the Rattenkönig. “Like you are built for the inside of my family’s things.”

He threw his head back in a yellow-toothed laugh. “Herr Drosselmeyer is not who you think he is, Fräulein. He will cut out your heart.”

“I am not afraid of you, Rattenkönig. And I am stronger than you know.”

“Look at how proud you are,” he mused. “Proud enough to learn the toymakers magic, to challenge the Rattenkönig.”

Clara lifted her chin, fists at her side shaking with rage. “It is _my_ magic. It has always been my magic. It has always been there.”

The Rattenkönig tilted his head, watching her with those eyes like hot coals. A slow, cruel smile unfurled across his snout. “And yet he showed you how to wield it. How to control it. The irony that you will love him too.”

“Too?”

Another rough bark of a laugh. “There is another, reaching for you across the expanse. A soldier. A nutcracker prince. Carved by hand to give his heart to you. Selfless love for a lonely little girl.”

Clara thought of the boy on the battlefield. Soft and sad and calling, calling, calling. 

In an instant, her bravado fell. Shameful heat creeped up her neck. Love for a boy she had not met, reaching for her somewhere across a dream as cannons and bodies littered the ground around him.

The _longing_ way he looked at her—

“Perhaps the stories got it all wrong, Fräulein. Perhaps you will be the one to cut out the toymaker’s heart instead.”

✦

Even as her mother pulled the curling rags from her pale yellow hair, Clara couldn’t shake the dream of the Rattenkönig. She felt like she had absolutely no sleep at all, though she’d ignored the knocks at her door until far past supper. 

Clara’s mother ran her fingers through the curls. She caught her eye through the reflection in the vanity. “What’s wrong, darling?”

Clara shrugged and tried to smile. “Nothing. Just tired is all.”

“Shouldn’t have stayed up so late reading those silly fairy stories. Our guests will think you’ve fallen ill.”

Clara sighed. “Yes, Mama.”

She watched in the mirror as Mama expertly pinned curls into place until they were delicately piled on top of her head. It made her feel like a queen. Her neck looked longer and elegant, dotted at the base of her throat with a string of pearls. Even with the extra fullness beneath her chin. 

It was not very frequent that she felt beautiful; being bigger than the other girls she knew, more prone to flights of fancy than etiquette, a distinct lack of romantic prospects—

Mama gave her shoulders a loving squeeze. “Stunning, mein Liebling. Herr Drosselmeyer will be breathless.”

Clara felt like she might catch fire. “Mama!”

“I know that lovelorn look, Clara. I was a young woman once too.” 

“It is nothing,” Clara said, forcing herself to look down at her hands in her lap. “I barely know him.”

Mama lifted Clara’s chin. “That has never stopped anyone’s heart before.” 

Clara frowned and did not reply. 

“Just have fun tonight, darling. Try not to worry so much, you’ll get wrinkles like your Mama.”

That pulled a laugh from her. 

Mama kissed her cheek and guided her from the seat before the vanity. She helped her dress in comfortable silence, humming carols under her breath. 

Clara’s gown for the party was fit for a sugarplum queen. Swaths of silk draped over her curves in candy-pink. A cherry velvet belt and train that led from her bustle. The sleeves sat off her shoulders, ruffled across her bicep with just a sliver of skin showing between it and the start of her gloves.

She studied herself in the full-length mirror.

Maybe she would leave Herr Drosselmeyer breathless. 

✦

She watched for him from their balcony in the entryway. 

Most of the guests had already arrived, wearing heavy, beautiful dresses and tailcoats. They left their coats and hats with the footman before disappearing into the party. 

Their house had been strung with garland and holly. Every silver and crystal surface polished to gleaming perfection. There were hundreds of candles, new and burning like little stars in every chandelier and sconce. 

And the Christmas tree in the ballroom; thrice as tall as her father and littered with ornaments and candles and tinsel—

Until very recently, Clara thought that was the closest she’d ever get to magic. 

Just as she was beginning to wonder if he’d show up at all, Drosselmeyer slipped into the foyer like a mouse. 

He looked small from above with his hunched shoulders and too many thankful bows, slipping his tattered coat and top hat to the footman at the door. Even still, he was so handsome she had to stifle a girlish giggle behind her gloved hand. 

“I was almost worried you’d lost your nerve, Herr Drosselmeyer,” she called from the top of the stairs. 

His eyes darted up to her and widened in surprise. He smiled like she hung the moon as she descended towards him. “I was simply taking the scenic route.”

“I believe we’ve both heard that excuse before.”

She stopped a few stairs above him, reveling in the way he still looked up at her with those terribly blue eyes. He took her hand from the railing and kissed the back of it, lips warm on her skin even through the gloves.

“You are stunning, Clara.” 

She laughed, suddenly keenly interested in the brocade pattern of the stair runner. “You flatter me.”

“Look at me.” With cold fingers, he tilted her chin up to meet his eyes. “I mean it. You are the stuff of fairytales, Clara. In every way imaginable.”

“Those fairytales warned me of boys with pretty tongues, Herr Drosselmeyer.” 

He snorted, something unreadable falling over his face. His gaze caught on her mouth. “I thought we decided this wasn’t a fairytale.”

Clara remembered the warning of the Rattenkönig. _Herr Drosselmeyer is not who you think he is,_ _Fräulein._

If he was not a knight or a prince, what did that leave? 

_He will cut out your heart._

“Then why does it feel like one?” she whispered.

When he smiled at her—all sharp lines and teeth—she thought of dark wizards and usurper kings. She never wanted him to stop smiling at her like that. 

_Perhaps the stories got it all wrong,_ _Fräulein_ . _Perhaps you will be the one to cut out the toymaker’s heart instead._

“Then just for tonight, we will be.”

She took his hand without hesitation and led him to the ballroom. 

✦

They danced until the grandfather clock in the parlor chimed an hour past midnight. 

Clara had never had so much fun in her life, spinning in Drosselmeyer’s arms. His hands forever cold in hers, but comforting against her waist or the small of her back. She had only seen her mother and father once, Mama only sweeping past to give her a warm smile and approving nod towards Herr Drosselmeyer. 

When the band struck something low and sweet, running against her senses like honey, he held her close and pressed a kiss to her temple for all to see. Every small brush of his skin against hers set her aflame.

She pressed her nose to his shoulder and inhaled the warm scent of him. Wood smoke and tobacco and paint. 

“You’re a very good dancer, Herr Drosselmeyer.”

He sighed. “You don’t have to lie to me, Clara.”

Clara pulled back so she could see his face. He wrinkled his nose at her. “Not lying! I’m very clever, you know.”

“I stepped on your foot twice.”

“Only twice. Frau Beitel’s son usually steps on my foot at least five times. I am black and blue by the time the party is over.”

He pressed his mouth into her hair to stifle his laughter. “I am glad you have such terrible taste in dance partners.” 

“In my defense, my parents usually pick my dance partners.”

“Then I am glad to have been your choice this time,” Drosselmeyer said. He gave her one last peck before he stopped swaying, hands coming to rest on her hips. “Come with me, there’s something I want to show you.”

Clara looked up at him through her lashes. “You don’t seem like the kind of man suited for surprises, Herr Drosselmeyer.”

“I seem like I’m not many things that I am.” The corner of his mouth twitched. “But I made something for you. I was going to leave it for you to find but I want to see you open it.”

Clara gave him a soft smile and let him drag her back to the secluded foyer. He helped her onto the first stair so they’d be eye-level. 

“Close your eyes,” he said.

She humored him, rocking back and forth on her heels. “I didn’t see you carry anything in.”

He took her hands and turned them up, held aloft in the air like snow clouds. “You forget so easily about my magic?”

“How could I ever forget? Ours is the same.”

He laughed at that. 

And then something heavy and cool settled in her hands. 

She opened her eyes to the wooden visage of the soldier from her dreams. A nutcracker, more finely and beautifully carved than anything he had ever created. Sad dark eyes, tufts of hair to match. Pristine in his little emerald uniform. 

Clara stood in stunned silence, cradling the nutcracker like a babe.

Drosselmeyer folded his hands over hers around the nutcracker. “I made him for you,” he said again, voice small and brittle like newly formed ice. “It is one of the many things I will make for you, if you wish it of me.”

She watched the soldier’s tiny painted face and heard the echo of her dream. Guns and cannons and agony. That voice—

Reaching. 

Calling. 

Her name, over and over again. 

Something just for her.

She threw herself from the stairs into Drosselmeyer’s arms, weeping for a reason she could not place. He held her tightly and let her cry into his neck. 

“He is beautiful,” she said against his wet skin. “You are so beautiful, Herr Drosselmeyer.”

His hands traced soothing circles across her back. “Merry Christmas, Clara.”

She gave him one last squeeze before stepping back, trying to brush away the remnants of tears. She held the nutcracker to her chest. 

“Merry Christmas, Herr Drosselmeyer,” she said, smiling softly. “It’s been the best one yet, thanks to you.”

“I am but a humble toymaker.” He gave her a last lingering kiss on the forehead. “One that, unfortunately, should be going.”

She let him slip away, motioning for a passing servant to fetch his hat and coat. “Would it be foolish to say I don’t want you to leave?”

His eyes widened like the flicker of a candle—almost undetectable in the motion of it all. “Not foolish,” he said. “But not possible tonight, darling. There is too much work to be done on nights such as these.”

“Work?” Clara laughed. “It’s _Christmas_.”

The servant returned with Drosselmeyer’s coat and hat, who took them with a sincere thanks and slipped them on with ease. “Yes, precisely! Is Christmas not the most magical night of the year?”

She couldn’t argue with that. Especially not after what she had experienced. She simply sighed in response, shaking her head with a rueful smile. 

He kissed her cheeks and tapped a finger on the tip of her nose. “Goodnight, Clara. You have somehow managed to make the most magical night of the year even more magical. I will not forget it so long as I live.”

“Goodnight, Herr Drosselmeyer,” she said, watching him go with an ache that tugged low at her belly.

As his hand came to rest on the doorknob, she turned to make her way up the stairs.

“Wait.” Drosselmeyer paused at the door, turning to look back up at her. Something cold and strange sparked in his eyes. “Do you dream, Clara?”

Her skirts swirled around her ankles as she stopped, studying him. “Don’t we all dream, Herr Drosselmeyer?”

He did not reply to that, only letting his lips curl before turning back to the door. He tucked his top hat over his feather-black hair. “Then that is where I will see you.” 

Before she could speak again, he slipped out into the cold. Nothing of him remained but the few bits of snow dancing across the entrance floor and the nutcracker in her arms. 

She held the nutcracker closer and wondered what became of toymakers who didn’t dream.

✦

Her dream that night spat her out on the dais of the dead Rat King.

The Rattenkönig’s crownless head was at her feet, red eyes unseeing against the dark and his tongue lolling from his rotten mouth. There was blood everywhere, sticky across her hands and her nightgown. It matted his fur and the bodies of his subjects upon the throne.

The horrified scream got caught behind her teeth.

The Nutcracker was there, instantly at her side with the same stricken look on his face as he dragged her away from the mess. “Clara, get up! We have to run!” 

Her feet scrambled to find purchase on the blood-soaked gears. “Who are you?” she wheezed. “What happened here?”

He paused long enough to bring her red-stained hands to his lips. “I have no name, I am only yours.”

The thought made her heart _sing_.

They swept down the stairs of the grandfather clock two at a time, passing chains and pendulums and the bodies of slain mouse guards. She pulled a rapier from where it was embedded in a golden chestplate.

The air smelled of death and gunpowder. It stung her lungs and her nostrils as she took gulps of acrid air as they ran. 

To something? From something? 

She couldn’t tell. 

They burst through the heavy wooden doors at the base of the grandfather clock’s castle. Clara fell to her knees, trying not to gag on the scent blood and upturned earth. The scene that rolled out before them was familiar and foreign all the same. A battle-scarred landscape of rolling Persian rugs and distant varnished forests. The sky was a faded, sickly green with damasked clouds.

And there were broken bodies of toy soldiers and mice as far as she could see.

She reached out for the Nutcracker’s sleeve. “Who did this? Please explain to me what is going on!”

The Nutcracker shook his head. “He made us. All of us. To fight his wars for the throne of the realms. He took the crown of the Rattenkönig. He will take the crown of the Sugar Plum Queen next. I won’t help him. I won’t kill for him anymore and I won’t watch him do it.”

Clara flinched back. All she could imagine was Drosselmeyer’s cold face splattered with blood. His lithe, fine fingers wrapped around the hilt of the same blade she had pulled from the body of the mouse guard. 

The thought made something new burn low within her like the belly of a stove. A desire to be _more_. 

It terrified her—to look out at all that destruction and be filled with equal parts horror and the call to control it. To end it.

To rule it.

Clara dug her fingers in the rug and forced herself to stand. “Take me to him.”

“Clara, please listen to me.” The Nutcracker pulled her to him, cradling her face with warm hands. “We have to go, we have to run. I was made to protect you, let me protect you.”

She watched his mouth open to say more, soft and pink and ready to plead with her. She couldn’t stand the thought of listening to him beg.

So she kissed him. 

His words disappeared against her lips, shifting instead to a sweet sound ringing from the back of his throat. Her hands rested against his chest, fighting the odd sense of repulsion when he took no breath and she felt no steady thrum of a living heart. He held onto her by the swell of her waist. 

He trailed after her as she pulled away, falling back down from the tips of her toes.

“I do not need your protection,” she whispered. She opened her eyes and found him watching her with enough adoration to make her throat tighten. “I need you to take me to him. Let me put an end to this.”

He traced the shape of her cheek in wonder. “I think you are the bravest person I have ever met, Clara Stahlbaum. I will take you to the Toymaker and I will fight at your side. I will die at your side if that is what you ask of me, just as he built me to do.”

She couldn’t find an answer comforting enough to give him, so instead she pressed her lips to his again. 

✦

They followed the trail the war had dug into the dream-warped landscape of Clara’s home. 

Carpeted jewel-colored grass between cold drifts of snow, swirling in the muted colors of their kitchen tiles. The air here was sweet beneath the doom. Gingerbread houses spat smoke—some from candied smokestacks and some from piles of caved-in wafer roofs. 

The sound of cannon fire and the metallic clash of swords grew closer, the front lines finally appearing over the tallest peaks of the butcher block mountain. Down below, more lines of toy soldiers and nutcrackers met with gingerbread men and fairies in macaron armor. They cut each other down with sabers and bright bursts of magic that made Clara’s hair stand on end.

The Nutcracker gripped Clara’s hand. His scabbard fit snugly around her hips, sheathing the stolen mouse guard’s blade. He had given her his green uniform coat to wear over her blood-stained nightgown. It wasn’t quite big enough to button around her belly, but it made her feel regal all the same. 

She had become the knight she had spent so many childhood nights dreaming of. 

“The Sugar Plum Queen will be waiting for him. We should find her first.”

Clara scanned the horizon, searching beyond the armies and their fallen. A gleaming copper castle pierced the sky, shaped from stacks of pots and pans. The tips of the tallest spires had begun to tarnish.

“Would she let him come all the way to her castle?” Clara asked. “There are no guards outside to stop him.”

The Nutcracker’s eyebrows furrowed. “I can’t pretend to know the logic of this realm but it seems unlikely she would leave her throne open like that.”

“Perhaps it is a trap then.”

As Clara started to make her way down the mountain, his fingers tightened around hers. “Be careful. You are a stranger here just as I am.”

Clara looked back out over the snow-covered realm that was her home. She saw the familiar shapes of the furniture in the trees, the color of the wallpaper across the sky. Every sweet treat that their cook had made with Fritz incessantly at their side. 

“I am not a stranger,” she said. “I know this place from across a dream.”

✦

The inside of the Sugar Plum Queen’s castle was dark and cold. Frost crawled up the metal walls with pale brittle fingers, reaching for a ceiling that seemed endlessly above them. 

Clara and the Nutcracker drew their swords. 

“Your Highness,” Clara called. 

Her voice echoed across the empty hall and up, up, up.

A scream answered from somewhere in the spire above them.

Clara and the Nutcracker shared a panicked look before taking off in search of the stairs.

They climbed the tower hand-in-hand, taking two steps at a time as it spiraled up the outer wall. Each time Clara slipped, her slippers giving out on the icy copper, the Nutcracker was there to pull her up again. He pressed encouraging words into the shell of her ear, but they all vanished against the roar of blood in her head. 

What would they find?

What would she become when they found it?

She could only lift the hem of her nightgown and keep climbing. 

Each window they passed was shattered, torn curtains stitched with candy floss whipping in the frigid wind. The army of toys grew closer, beating back gingerbread men and fairies towards the castle as they advanced. Clara heard their screams, the staccato fall of sabers and rifles.

A cannon ball punched the side of the tower, sending a deafening gong through the air. She saw stars, heard nothing but endless ringing even as the Nutcracker shook her shoulders and his lips formed her name. 

Keep climbing. 

Keep climbing. 

Keep climbing.

They did. With guns and cannons beating the air, they climbed clinging to each other to the throne room at the top of the tower. They burst through the doors to find two figures worn ragged from battle.

Even so, the Sugar Plum Queen was more beautiful than Clara had even fathomed. 

Tall and made of muscle, wings broad like a bird of prey but iridescent like a beetle’s. One fluttered limply at her side, slashed through and broken. Lavender curls piled on her head around a white gold crown, spun delicately like sugar as if a single breath could shatter it. Her armor was pale to match, decorated with lines of finely piped frosting and peppermints that shone like jewels. Her hips were surrounded in pastel tulle and chainmail. A cut on her doll-like cheek oozed blood.

The Sugar Plum Queen stood on her dais above Drosselmeyer and lifted a glaive to his chin. Poised to strike, deadly as a candy-coated viper. 

Clara couldn’t get the words out fast enough as the Queen reared back to finish the Toymaker, clad in black iron armor and a cape the same wine color as the details on Clara’s Christmas dress.

She screamed his name and the Queen hesitated.

The world moved like molasses, falling heavy and slow around her. But there was no sweetness to it. 

The Nutcracker was gone from her side and suddenly beside Drosselmeyer, shoving him away from the Queen’s blade. 

Drosselmeyer’s wide eyes found hers across the room, filled with confusion and relief. The Toymaker, come to take everything from this strange dreamland. 

Saved by the apostized thing he had created to help him conquer it.

Clara screamed again, this time as the Queen’s glaive punched through the Nutcracker’s chest. 

He fell to the ground in a pool of oil-like ichor.

She didn’t remember crossing the room, letting the rapier slip from her fingers to the floor. She barely heard Drosselmeyer breathe her name or the brush of is icy fingers across the back of her neck as she pulled the Nutcracker’s limp body into her lap. 

She didn’t know why she was crying; why she felt a tiny fracture like a spider web across her heart. The Rattenkönig’s knowing, spiteful words echoed in her mind.

_The irony that you will love him too._

Her foolish, broken Nutcracker.

The Toymaker that had made him. 

The Sugar Plum Queen looked back and forth between Clara and Drosselmeyer, trying to draw a conclusion from the way he stood over her with uncertainty. 

“Leave, Magician,” the Queen said at last. “This is not your fight.”

Clara brushed the Nutcracker’s soft hair away from his face. It was painted again, unfeeling and tilted blankly up towards the sky. The warmth had seeped out of him.

“No,” Clara seethed. She held the Nutcracker to her chest and forced herself to look up at the Sugar Plum Queen. “I know this place. It is mine.”

The Queen bared a row of pointed teeth. Her eyes had gone black as coal as she pointed the glaive then at Clara. “Then you will die for it.”

Drosselmeyer knocked the Queen’s glaive away with a parry of his sword. Clara managed to roll away, scrambling for her rapier or for anything to help the fight. Her nose burned with the scent of burnt sugar and the Nutcracker’s greasy blood. 

Drosselmeyer and the Sugar Plum Queen circled each other like animals, trading wild swings of their weapons that rang around the room like the inside of a bell. The Queen looked feral, not at all like the watercolor fairies from her storybooks. In the washed out light coming from the windows, her skin shifted from lavender to mint and back again. 

She whirled her glaive above her head and brought it down in a wide arc that threw sparks off of Drosselmeyer’s blackened chestplate.

The Queen swung again. Drosselmeyer’s cry echoed and then the room fell to silence. 

He dropped his sword in the chaos, stumbling back to cradle his face. Blood leaked between his fingers, falling down his face like a curtain. He looked half wild, struck suddenly by his own mortality. He was just _a_ toymaker again, too small in his armor and the Rattenkönig’s stolen crown upon his dark hair.

With her back to Clara, the Queen took ragged, heavy breaths that shook her shoulders. “You will not take my crown, Toymaker. I told you once that I would strike you down for your ambition.”

Drosselmeyer dropped his hands to reveal a mess of gore where his left eye had once been. Even still, the blue of his last eye seemed to glow against the blood staining his face. “Kill me and your realm still lies in ruin. The Rattenkönig is dead. My army marches on your copper palace. You will fall, whether I’m here to see it or not.”

The Queen snarled and lifted her glaive to strike him down.

A fierce wave of protectiveness ignited Clara. Her trembling hands steadied against the hilt of her rapier. 

She couldn’t stand the thought of being alone again the world. No magic to believe in and no one to understand magic lived in her too. 

Her heart pounded as she raised her rapier—

And she buried it in the Sugar Plum Queen’s back.

The act washed Clara numb. 

The Queen stumbled forward, drawing quick ragged breaths as blood bloomed beneath her armor. The glaive slipped from her hands.

With that terrible, villainous face that Clara had grown to love, Drosselmeyer plucked it from her feet. He balanced it, testing the weight of it. 

The Sugar Plum Queen fell to her knees before Drosselmeyer. “You can take everything from this world,” she hissed, “but your ambition outweighs your heart. It will be the death of you, Toymaker.”

“Then I will keep taking until I am dead.”

He swung the blade and the Queen’s head hit the floor with a wet _thump_.

Across the bodies of the Sugar Plum Queen and the Nutcracker, Drosselmeyer watched Clara with terrible, exhaustive grief. If he felt pain from the battered side of his face, he didn’t show it. He started to shake and crossed the space between he and Clara in two broad steps.

Clara clawed his armor to bring him down to her, weeping against his neck. 

He held her so tight it stole her breath, but she never wanted him to let her go. 

“Wake up, Clara,” he whispered into her hair. “Wake up and come to me.”

Clara felt herself drifting away, a train going through a tunnel and the dreamworld around her going dark. She reached up to cradle the broken side of his face. With her last bit of breath, she stood on her toes and pressed a kiss to his blood-stained mouth.

✦

She ran to him.

Barefoot in the predawn light, running through the snow without a care who saw her. 

Drosselmeyer was waiting for her at his door. The blood was gone and he was dressed haphazardly in the same trousers and button up he had worn, but a bandage covered his left eye.

She didn’t care. 

Not about the cold, not about her parents who had certainly heard her run through the house in the middle of the night. 

She had leapt over the pieces of her nutcracker and the beheaded body of Fritz’s Herr Rattenkönig strewn across the floor to get to him. 

She would have her magic and her fairytale and the king that had usurped it all.

Drosselmeyer spun as she threw herself into his arms. Their laughter rang out, snapping like the flame in the gaslights. 

“We won,” he said. “The realms of the Rattenkönig and the Sugar Plums. They’re ours.”

Clara kissed the bandage over his eye. “That makes you a king, Herr Drosselmeyer. And a king sounds awfully like a fairytale.”

He laughed. “I suppose it does, doesn’t it? But if I am a king, what does that make you?”

“A queen,” she mused. “And a knight and a magician.”

“A slayer of fairy queens. The leader of an army of toy soldiers. A lover of nutcrackers.”

“That is a very long list of titles,” Clara said with a grin. 

At last, Drosselmeyer let her feet touch the cold ground again. He kissed her, again and again and again. “You deserve every single one of them. It would be an honor to be a king at your side.” He tucked a stray golden curl behind her ear. “To be your toymaker. To be your fairytale.”

Clara smiled. “I think I would like that very much, Herr Drosselmeyer.”

_THE END_


End file.
